kbig

Hey guys,
I was recently in an accident in which the at-fault driver, who admitted guilt, was driving the opposite way and fell asleep and came onto my lane and caused a 3 car accident. All parties were injury free.
What I need help with is this: The at-fault driver's car belongs to his mother and is insured under Triple A. The driver is insured under Fred Loya Insurance. I spoke with both insurance claims representatives and they both say
they are not covering the damages due to either 1) Tripel A- "the car was being driven by somebody not insured by us, you should follow up with his insurance" and 2) Fred Loya - "The car is not insured under our policy, you should go follow up with the
policy the car is under."

So they are now both giving me the run-around. What should I do? I'll state again that the at-fault driver admitted guilt. There was also a police report.
Help?

mjeds

what you do is you go through your insurance company and you let your insurance company hammer out the issue with his insurance company.. This is why you pay for insurance. Let their highly paid attorneys deal with it.

There is no reason for you to even bother with his insurance companies, they have no reason to assist you or make things easy on you, you are not their customer.

Deal with your own insurance, and let them hash it out. You are not at fault, CA law prevents them from jacking your rates if you make a claim on a not at fault accident..

RomanTPA

Call them back, state that you will be starting a law suit against both companies because they allowed for their insurer give out the car for joy rides and they are liable. I know that here in florida, insurance will cover any driver of the car that is not a spouse of the insured, they need a separate policy.

Either way layer for this type of deal will be free for you and they will bill the insurance company.


Or.. as mjeds said, you can have your insurance company duke it out with the other company.

kbig

Thanks
That is what I was afraid of, jacking up my rates. I did not realize that was CA law.

bclexus

Not sure why you would ever want to talk with the other party's insurance company. Your insurance company would tell you NOT to talk with them (if you said you wanted to)... My question is - have you talked with your insurance company? That is who you need to be talking with... Let your insurance company deal with the other insurance company. That's what you pay them for!

mjeds

what you need to be careful with is the insurance company assigning fault to you..

The insurance companies do not care what the police report says, nor whether or not someone admitted guilt, they have their own investigation and their claims investigator decides who is at fault. If you allow the other parties insurance to do the investigation they will likely find you a small percentage at fault, they do this so that they can negotiate a lower payout.. This will still raise your rates, even though your insurance was never involved, because anything with over $750 property damage or any injury gets reported to the DMV and thus the State Insurance Database.

Making the claim through your company will help is minimizing them finding your partially at fault. And again it frankly doesn't matter because there is more than $750 in property damage so it is going to get reported by one of the parties involved.

--

you might scoff at it, but let me tell you, last year some punk running from the police ran a stop sign, hit the drainage dip and went airborne, came through the 6' retaining wall separating my mothers house from the boulevard and ended up in her living room.. HIS insurance company wanted to claim my mother was 10% at fault for the accident..

kbig

I did talk to them, my Insurance rep told me it's fine to follow up with the driver's insurance and if they "play games" which he suspected Fred Loya insurance will do, just to follow up with him.
The thing that prevented me from filing a claim with my insurance in the first place is because I don't need my rates to be raised...

bclexus

I am really surprised that your insurance rep told you it was fine to talk with (follow up) with the other party's insurance. That should never be the case! You could make a statement that is taken out of context and not worded correctly, which could be used against you. You may want to re-confirm exactly what your rep meant by 'follow-up'!!!

Forget about your rates - that's between you and your insurance company and rep anyway...

mjeds

it's not uncommon, likely his rep was trying to save him from paying his deductible, which he will have to do if going through his insurance.. He will get it back when his insurance settles, but that could be 2-3 years down the line.

bclexus

Not me - the only time I would want to communicate with the other insurance company is to give an account of what happened (as I saw it)...and I would only want to give my statement to my insurance company or to my attorney and let them share it if they approved. In my view there is never a reason why I should ever be in communications with another party's insurance in which I have a claim against them on behalf of their client.

UDel

Your rates should not go up from a non at fault accident when you go through your insurance company. Your insurance company is not losing any money when it is clear the other driver is at fault. Most people will go through their own insurance company even for not at fault accidents because of the nonsense other insurance companies play like denying claims, stalling, stonewalling, arguing bills, try to get it repaired really cheaply, under valuing cars, etc that you should not have to deal with when using your company you pay for. The other at fault drivers insurance company may tell you to take a hike when you contact them and try to get them to pay and give out all kinds of BS excuses but they will sing a very different tune when your insurance company with a bunch of lawyers behind them and the facts go after them.

If your insurance company tries to raise your rates for a non fault accident, tell them you won't pay and complain/file BBB complain and then go with a different insurance company as they are not a company you want to be paying and representing you.

mjeds

In CA the insurance commission regulates this, insurance companies cannot raise rates for a non-chargeable accident or moving violation. They can only access a rate change if you are found 10% or more at fault for an accident or if the moving violation is a chargeable (point added to driving record) offense.

At least that is what was explained to me by my State Farm agent and my former AAA agent.

Davenlei

iTrader: (1)

Ok. We had to deal with a situation a couple years ago.

My wife was driving her car and was waiting at a red light. The driver behind her was texting and not paying attention. When the driver in back saw my wife's car creep up a little in her peripheral vision, she hit the gas and rammed the back of my wife's car. The girl that hit my wife was driving her boyfriends car (who had different insurance than her) but we only interacted with the insurance she gave us which was her boyfriends.

I will cut out all the middle crap that happened to make the story shorter but they tried to get my wife to give her side of the story on record and we politely declined and said they can get a transcript copy from our insurance company if they want it. They know our insurance has the transcript but they want the story restated to them and then use it against my wife if there are any inconsistencies between the two recordings. DON'T FALL INTO THAT TRAP! So in the end the other persons insurance company claimed my wife was 78% at fault for getting rear ended and at that point I ended all communication with the other insurance company and told my insurance the ball is in their court and to get it dealt with. I paid my deductible and was told I will get it back and my rates will not go up if not found at fault and based on the evidence they don't see how we could be found at fault at all.

When all was said and done, the girl that hit my wife was found 100% at fault and was actually noted as having an inconsistent story of the incident with a conflicting statement between two parts of her story. I got my deductible back and my rates did NOT go up.

GetUrWheel

iTrader: (2)

big 3 car accident.... From my past experience driving around in LA and getting into these ridiculous accidents.. let the insurance handle the situation. You pay them for this reason, not just to cover your car but you.

good story! I've had that happen to me too where the other party insurance wanted to hear my story directly from me and my insurance agent told me, "tell them nothing".

kbig

Thanks for the responses guys, I now know better.
The at-fault driver's insurance and the car's insurance never asked me for my side of the story- they simply said they are not covering the damages. So I'm going through my insurance now and hopefully they get this cleared up.